January 31, 2008	Thursday	Muharram 21, 1429

PESHAWAR, Jan 30: The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on Wednesday unearthed a fake brokerage firm in a posh locality of the city that is believed to have minted huge money from the public on the temptation of buying shares for them in the stock market.

FIA officials said the unregistered firm, Horizon International, was in the process of attaining the size of a “stock market” in the provincial capital where there is no stock exchange unlike that of Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad.

The firm was attracting more and more investors by giving them the hope of overnight gains in the stock market. However, the real size of the business of the fake firm would be ascertained only after studying the loads of information believed to be available on the computers -- three CPUs, 11 monitors and 11 telephone sets -- recovered by the FIA during a raid.

Speaking at a news conference, FIA Deputy Director Ikhtiar Gul said they raided bungalow number A-1, in Sector J-II, Phase II of the posh Hayatabad locality as the firm was operating there for the past seven months.

The official said during the raid two accused Ayaz Mehmood and Rehmat Gul were arrested and the recovered equipments were taken into custody.

“It was an organised group that looted innocent people on the name of stock exchange,” Ikhtiar Gul said, adding that the accused had failed to produce any austerity letter or license in this regard. Other accused were identified as Fayaz Bajwa, Asad Subhan, Zaheer and Aman.